In Nov. 2013 at the Orem [Utah] Public Library, author Brian Doyle gave a reading as part of the Utah Humanities Book Festival. Below is a short essay he handed out to everyone in the audience and asked that we post on this day commemorating the massacre at Sandy Hook …
“MOTHERLUNGE IS A FULL-FRONTAL assault on every dappled, dimpled and doily-enhanced image we’ve had of both women and mothers. Think Sandy or Orem, Utah—scrubbed clean with culturally-defined markers of motherhood, riven with Victorian charms that are neither really Victorian or charming. Then think the opposite.That is Scott’s literary world. That the story is also hysterically funny …
As with this country of ours at large, there is at play, in Jana Richman’s new novel The Ordinary Truth (Torrey House Press, 2012), the national see-saw of delusions vs. reality, collective doctrines vs. the sweet, inevitable flux of life’s authentic rhythms. In central Nevada—the driest state in the union, …
After the Newtown Massacre eight days ago, I am reminded of why I started this blog. We are all implicated in this tragedy because we all live in the same, little house together. Here is what I posit: Everything implicates all of us. All Americans are implicated by the attacks …
I meant to write a review of the sprawling novel of America’s Oregon Coast, Mink River by Brian Doyle over Thanksgiving, because it was what I was grateful for. As the year ends, I realize I’m thinking about it still. Grateful for it, still. Doyle’s narrative style is off-putting (at …
Part 7 Tonight, I wake up with a start. We are in an antiseptic Motel 6 outside Barkeyville. I remember vaguely the movie I fell asleep to: Adam Sandler and Kevin James are pretending to be gay so that they can sidestep civic red tape that prevents the James …
We leave Boston’s Logan determined to be self-directed, free. I’ll be damned if I am going to sit there for up to four days, we were told by surprisingly kind customer service representative at the other end of the airline’s “Need Help?” red phone. Cheryl had done all the talking …
Part 4 Down out of the Berkshires, winding on 84 still desperately seeking I-80, down towards the Hudson River which I announce so that the man-boy will see the important geographical features of our trip. “Cool” he says in response. “Cool.” Someday, I think. He will remember all …
Part 5 Robert Bly The man-boy not only knows all the lyrics of classic Rock and Roll songs, but the names of the musicians, the dates of most songs and the cultural milieu. It’s a walk through American history. How that is possible, I don’t know. This musical terrain is …
Back through the convenience store, I enter the Restaurant. The place is a abuzz with locals sitting at the counter, at tables and at perimeter booths one of which, apparently, is ours, dwarfing Cheryl who is sitting with a plastic menu the size of a motorcycle windshield. This is definitely …
